Social advertising refers to advertising campaigns that are carried out exclusively on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. The logic behind this marketing strategy is to make the most of the attention of consumers who spend time on these platforms, with the aim of positioning a particular product, content and/or service through paid ads.
Based on statistics from Digital In 2019 , prepared by We Are Social in conjunction with Hootsuite : There are approximately 3.484 billion active users on social networks in the world, meaning that 57% of the world's population uses these platforms on a daily basis.
In this context, companies prefer to develop their marketing campaigns on social media over other communication channels such as television and radio. According to data from BI Intelligence, social advertising revenue in the United States will exceed 30 billion dollars by 2021 , which gives us an indication of how important it is and will be for brands to connect with their potential buyers through these mass consumption platforms, where advertising has become increasingly profitable.
1. Instagram Stories
Stories are probably the most attractive tool for publishing content on Instagram today. They consist of informational pills that can be presented in image and video format and in which you can also include small texts, surveys, GIFs, hashtags, links, geolocations and/or emoticons.
Stories also allow you to mention other accounts and share posts that other people made on their feeds. Stories allow us to develop storytelling strategies and connect with our potential buyers through informative capsules that generate value,
Even though the content posted in this section only lasts 24 hours, Instagram users tend to focus their attention on stories first, rather than on the posts that appear on the main page. In this regard, Chris Cox, former product manager at Facebook , explained in a recent conference that “the increase in the use of Stories is on track to surpass the 'wall' as the main way in which users share things with their friends or audience.”
Ads in stories are a social advertising trend for 2020 because they expand our possibilities of converting visitors/followers into leads and subsequently into customers, since they give us the opportunity to introduce links to direct that traffic to landing pages, online stores and/or other spaces where conversion is generated in a more tangible way.
2. Marketing the influencers and Youtube
Youtube is by far the favorite platform for influencers to share their knowledge and provide content that is useful to their target audiences. Brands have known how to take advantage of the power of this platform to tell stories and position products and/or services and have turned it into one of the social advertising trends for 2020. The authenticity of micro-influencers has been an important hook for brands, who through their Youtube channels, seek to create human-to-human relationships with the public that listens to and sees these influencers, since at the same time, it is the same public of these brands.
Generation Z and millennials prefer audiovisual and video content to gain new knowledge qatar number for whatsapp and connect with what is happening in the world. According to a study by Forrester Research , 96% of teenagers with Internet access use YouTube. On the other hand, in a recent survey by comScore, which asked which 3 apps were the most essential and hardest to leave, people between 18 and 34 years old named YouTube only behind Facebook and Facebook Messenger.
This is why YouTubers have had such an influence on consumers, because they have known how to take advantage of this platform and, in turn, brands also take advantage of the popularity of these opinion leaders to position themselves, which is why they create sponsorship alliances with them in exchange for advertising.
These are people whose voices are heard a lot, they are opinion leaders for their audiences and have a high level of credibility, therefore, all the products and/or services they recommend will have a significant influence on their consumers.
3. Video Ads
Some studies predict that video will dominate 85% of internet traffic by 2019. Others confirm that 54% of internet users already watch videos on social media on a monthly basis, and this figure will only grow in the coming years.
Video ads are experiencing a similar situation. 65% of ad impressions on Instagram were visual content and this number is expected to rise as well. The most successful platforms for social ad campaigns are YouTube and Instagram, and this is where this trend has predominated. Through videos we can tell a story in a more explicit way and promote valuable products and/or services in less than a minute. Both brands and consumers have preferred this visual trend to position themselves.
4. Advertising on WhatsApp
Confirmed: the instant messaging app par excellence, WhatsApp, will include advertising in its app starting in 2020. Since WhatsApp was bought by Facebook in 2014, the company has been looking for a way to make this purchase profitable and include advertising through Stories or statuses, as Instagram did at the time.
In fact, WhatsApp's "States" were launched in early 2017 as an extension of the success of Instagram Stories. Today, there are more users of "States" than Snapchat stories, so Facebook wants to take advantage of this market to sell advertising.
This feature is used by 450 million users a day, which is why it is considered that social advertising on WhatsApp will become a trend. Even though this platform is recognized more as a messaging application than a social network, it gives its users the same opportunities to create ads through stories.
5. Social Shipping
Until now, we used social advertising to drive consumers from social networks to our purchasing platforms through calls to action . In this process, brands could lose sales opportunities and along the way there was the risk that potential customers would back out, due to external factors such as the ecommerce taking a long time to load, problems with the link, etc.
In this sense, to make ads more effective and avoid losses during the buyer journey, social networks have begun to enable the purchase option within the same platform. Social Shopping is already a reality, thanks to new spaces such as Facebook Marketplace and Instagram Shopping , and it has positioned itself as one of the social advertising trends for 2020 because it allows brands to generate sales more directly.